apologia

History is not a creed or a catechism, it gives lessons rather than rules; still no one can mistake its general teaching in this matter, whether he accept it or stumble at it. Bold outlines and broad masses of color rise out of the records of the past. They may be dim, they may be incomplete; but they are definite. And this one things at least is certain; whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this.

"The Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this."

Quite an assertion. The man who made it was the great Oxford scholar and Anglican divine John Henry Newman, probably the most important convert to the Catholic faith of the 19th century.

He was also one of the most important influences in my own conversion.

He's the one who got me thinking about history -- especially the history of the Church in its earliest centuries. Here I was, reading along in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, when I ran into this sentence: "To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant." What? To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant?!

And as though that were not pointed enough, he went on: "It is easy to show that the early Church was not Protestant." What??? Easy to show that early Church was not Protestant?!

And then, no doubt the most colorful of his statements along these lines:

This utter incongruity between Protestantism and historical Christianity is a plain fact, whether…regarded in its early or in its later centuries….

So much must the Protestant grant that, if such a system of doctrine as he would now introduce ever existed in early times, it has been clean swept away as if by a deluge, suddenly, silently, and without memorial….

Here I was, the senior pastor of an evangelical Protestant Church. I had graduated from a Protestant college and then a Protestant seminary. I was about eight years into my career as a Protestant minister. And one of the most brilliant minds of the 19th century is telling me that if the kind of church I was leading ever existed in late-first century, the second century, the third, fourth and fifth centuries, it has disappeared from the historical record, leaving no trace.

Newman was throwing down the gauntlet with such claims. I simply had to investigate.

The Question of History

Now, as a Protestant, sola scriptura was the foundation of my worldview.

I took inspired scripture alone to be 'Authoritative.' The opinions of Bible scholars and theologians and Christian authors, even the solemn formulations of Church Councils, creeds and denominational statements of faith -- these functioned for me as guides and counselors.

I respected them. But none of them possessed 'Authority' in the sense that I would accept their ruling as true and bow to it even if I thought the evidence of Scripture was pointing another direction.

No. When it came to what I should believe and hold as true -- about God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Bible, the church, sin and salvation, faith and obedience, the various moral issues -- for me the quest for truth in Christian doctrine amounted to the quest to rightly interpret inspired scripture and organize its teaching into a coherent and consistent biblical worldview.

And with this essential view of things, I wasn't all that terribly interested in what the Church of the second, third, fourth and fifth centuries believed.

Men like Clement of Rome, Polycarp, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus -- I knew they were heroes of the faith. Many of them martyrs. But what they believed? I didn't think of it as something that would necessarily cast much light on the issues of New Testament interpretation.

After all, if they agreed with what I took to be the most accurate reading of scripture, I would say they were wise faithful interpreters of God's Word. If they disagreed with me, I would say they had drifted from the truth. I knew for sure that by the time of the Emperor Constantine in the fourth century Christianity had pretty much twisted itself into the strange shape we call the Catholic Church.

So why would I trust anything said between the time of the apostles and then?

My working assumption was that the teachings of the apostles had become corrupted almost immediately and that the beliefs and practices of Christians in the early centuries didn't necessarily tell us what the apostles actually taught, or what the earliest Christians actually believed.

Newman challenged that assumption. It's more natural, he argued, to think that...

the society of Christians which the apostles left on earth were of that religion to which the apostles converted them… that as Christianity began by manifesting itself as of a certain shape and bearing to all mankind, therefore it went on so to manifest itself…

Sure, individual believers might drift off in any and all directions. Sure, the church at large might wander from the apostolic teaching with respect to this detail or that. But if we look at the Christianity of the late-first, second and third centuries, and we can see the shape of a basic shared theology; if, as Newman said, "bold outlines and broad masses of color rise out of the records of the past" to paint a picture that is "definite," however dim and incomplete. Wouldn't that mean something?

At minimum, what Newman was saying is that the burden of proof should be on the one says the Christian religion we see in the second, third and fourth centuries is not the Christian religion taught by the apostles, that the Church we see functioning during that time is not the Church founded by Christ and his apostles, but some deformed version of the 'original.'

I believed Newman had a point -- at least enough of a point that I should read the Church Fathers and see what I could see. And this is what I set out to do. After all, having watched a good deal of television growing up in the 60's, I had an intuitive sense that the Fathers might Know Best. And so I began to read the documents.

I wanted to hear what those closest to the apostles had to say.

In particular, I wanted to hear what they had to say about the issue of authority. I wanted to know: was sola scriptura the faith and practice of the early Church?

Argument Number One

In our next two lessons I'm going to present the results of my reading of the Church Fathers. What I want to do in the remainder of this lesson is tie things back into what we've already seen in our thinking through the witness of the New Testament (see previous four posts).

You see, the first argument I would make that sola scriptura was not in the minds of the early Christians living immediately after the time of the apostles is the simple fact that not one of the New Testament writers gives us any hint that it would be.

When you think about it, what Protestantism essentially holds is that the Church Christ established, the Church we see functioning in the New Testament, is in a fundamental way not the Church our Lord intended to exist through the ages and until his return.

Let me explain. Within the Church we see 'in action' in the New Testament, authority resided (a) in scripture, (b) in the oral teaching of the Apostles and (c) in the ability of the Church to meet in council as it did in Acts 15, to settle theological disputes and issue 'Authoritative' decrees.

What Protestants believe is that with the death of the apostles, everything changed.

After that, 'Authority' resided in scripture alone.

In other words, what Protestantism is essentially saying is that on the most foundational level, dealing with the mostfundamentalissue of all, the issue of where Authority lies in the Church, a massive change occurred with the death of the apostles.

And yet (as we've already seen) there is not a hint in the writings of the New Testament that such a profound change would be coming.

We don't find the apostles talking about it. We don't find them preparing the Church for it. Nowhere, for instance, are the churches told that once the apostles die it's going to be scripture alone. Nowhere are they informed that the Church will no longer have the ability by the Spirit to do what it did in Acts 15, that there will be no more decrees for Christians to receive with joy. Nowhere is it said that the writings of the apostles will become the sole infallible rule of faith and practice for the Church and for each individual believer and that, as Luther said, every Christian will become "for himself pope and church." That, for all practical purposes, every man will believe what he sees to be the teaching of scripture and every woman the same.

Basically, the ecclesiastical equivalent of Mad Max.

Okay, okay. The jury is instructed to ignore that last sentence and the court reporter to strike it from the record. But apart from that, everything else I've said here is assumed by the Protestant position.

And yet we see none of it in the New Testament documents themselves. On the contrary, we see St. Paul commanding the believers to "stand firm and hold to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter" (2 Thessalonians 2:15). We see him instructing Timothy, his spiritual son and successor in the ministry, to take the things he has "heard" him teach and "guard" them "by the Holy Spirit" so that he can "entrust" them to other faithful men who will do what Timothy has done (2 Timothy 1:13,14; 2:1). The emphasis in the New Testament is on the faith being preserved by the Holy Spirit through something akin to apostolic succession.

Here is one reason I came to believe that sola scriptura was not in the minds of Christians living in the decades after the death of the apostles. That it was not the historic faith of the Church.

I'm interested in the second part coming out.
To my dismay in the past I once came across a protestant who told me that when Paul mentioned "By letter or word of mouth" this didn't discount Sola Scriptura because eventually the apostles would go on to write down everything that is to be passed down anyway. My simple reply was to tell this person that there is no way they could know the contents of what was passed down "by word of mouth" and therefore declare that it was all written down anyway. This didn't seem to phase them. What would your reply be?

Strangerdays,
Sorry for jumping in, but my thought would be to ask them to show me that from Scripture, because the witnesses instituted by Paul and then later by Timothy and other ordained witnesses of those oral traditions are the leaders/bishops of the Church which the Scriptures command to pass down those traditions he is saying don't exist. He is denouncing them on his own assumption and own authority. Just my thoughts.
God bless,
MichaelTX

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Ken Hensley

5/14/2015 12:49:01 pm

Hi Stranger, I would agree with you in saying that he's made a statement he can't substantiate. He assumes it because it fits his perspective, but he has no way of knowing it.

In fact, we positively know that Paul taught at least one church things he never wrote down in a letter because he tells us -- when he speaks of the man of sin in 2 Thess 2 and then says, in essence, "But I don't need to say more because I told you this when I was with you."

But I would also add this: Even if everything Paul taught is referred to in his writings, still doesn't mean that he spelled out everything clearly enough that that we don't need the testimony of tradition and the church to understand the teaching.

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Mark Economou

5/12/2015 03:08:18 am

Is there an explanation coming later that describes why you chose Catholic instead of Greek/Eastern Orthodox? They also claim to be the authentic rendition of the original church and teach similar conclusions about Sola Scriptura.

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Ken Hensley

5/14/2015 12:53:04 pm

Mark, yes, we will get to some of this in its time -- when we discuss the arguments and evidence for the papacy. But because I want to stick closely with the content of each lesson I'll leave it for later.

Mark,
At one time, Orthodox Churches were in communion with the Pope. They no longer are since they are in schism with the chair of Peter.

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vincent lancon

5/12/2015 04:54:36 am

The whole papal system did not materialize until the early middle ages, anything before that is an invention of Rome to try and say Peter passed it on as an office. Never happened. The Church was universal at first and then branches veered off into apostasy. This is what caused the protestant reformation...by that time Rome was way off course and it did not look like the early church either... so going back to it means nothing, it went wrong along time ago.

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john sims

5/12/2015 05:10:51 am

Where in Scriptures does it say the teaching authority would not be passed on beyond the last Apostles? The pastorals seem to present a trajectory into a Church (even using that word in the singular vs Paul's earlier writings (some Protestants don't like that and claim it wasn't written by Paul himself) with a teaching authority. At what point did the Church veer off into apostasy? 2nd 3rd century? What teachings

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Ken Hensley

5/14/2015 12:55:00 pm

I appreciate that this is what you believe, but all you've done here is assert it. I will look forward to hearing your comments when we come to the subject of Peter and the papacy.

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Sue Korlan

7/12/2015 01:53:19 am

You need to read Against Heresies by St. Irenaeus written approximately 180.

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John Sims

5/12/2015 04:58:22 am

Differentiating between a closed 27 NT text canon vs. "Scriptures" seems to be important in relation to SS. Its one thing to acknowledge the normative nature of the texts that make up the NT and quite another to talk about a closed canon that did not materialize for centuries. This distinction in my opinion renders the idea that the "Scriptures" were the norm of norms historically untenable. The first few centuries make it abundantly clear the norm of norms was the doctrinal teachings that involved the Church's interpretation of those texts. So while as Rahner has said the Scriptures are the Church's means of self objectification of herself the norm of norms functionally was "the according to whom" interpretation of those texts and later the selection/exclusion of those texts. The norm of norms seems to have been the role of the Church played in their interpretation and selection. This does not mean that those Scriptures where made normative by the Church exclusively (They are the unique word of God qualitatively different than any other texts) but rather the Church played such an important role that apart from the Church's interpretation they rather than play a normative role have been used to justify heresy. The teaching of the Church and the Scriptures seemed to have put each other in check from straying too far in a sense if that makes sense. This historical reality renders SS nothing more that a 16th century rallying cry against the Church's teaching authority.

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Ken Hensley

5/14/2015 12:57:43 pm

Thank you, John. Great points -- and well said. I'm coming to soon discuss all of this. In fact some of it this week.

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vincent lancon

5/12/2015 05:20:36 am

By the time the catholic church started making up false doctrine like purgatory and indulgences, when it started worshiping Mary , and when it added works to salvation....the very first instance it did any of these things...it went apostate and has never repented of any of it.

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Dwight

5/12/2015 11:27:02 am

The Church can't repent of false allegations.

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billg

5/13/2015 10:20:41 pm

When did this happen? By the 2nd Century? The 3rd?

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John Sims

5/14/2015 08:18:13 am

Hi V,
Mary is not worshiped. If a Catholic did that they would be guilty of heresy. Catholics don't teach we can work our way into heaven, that would also be heresy, as far as purgatory goes there ancient Jewish beliefs and practices as well as admittedly debated NT Scriptural references. At any rate as a former Protestant of 17 years before entering the CC I can only hope you do your homework because your statements clearly show that your claims regarding Catholic doctrine are erroneous at best and disingenuous at worst.

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Brendan Lamison

5/14/2015 12:14:37 pm

Vincent,
Take a step back for a second. Just stop for a moment and examine your motives. Are you truly open to truth, or do you just want to go on the offensive and bring up tired old arguments? Let's not make accusations and assumptions without facts to at least defend your position. If you want to say catholics invented purgatory, then fine. Tell us when this happened, who invented it, and how this "new belief" is different than what was previously taught. The ironic thing about this is that catholics can do just that when we look at the reformers. We can look at the man made doctrines they invented, who invented them, when they were invented, and how they are different than what the church previously taught. Sola scriptura, sola fide, teaching on the eucharist, baptism, the nature of the church, etc. Facts are facts. We're just asking you to provide equal evidence that the catholic church did the same thing that the protestants did-change doctrine into something new that wasn't previously taught.

Ken Hensley

5/14/2015 01:03:50 pm

Vincent, again you merely make assertions. But we already know that Protestants (at least most) reject the ideas of purgatory and indulgences. And the fact that you think Catholics "worship" Mary and "added works" to salvation causes me to think you shouldn't be speaking so authoritatively about what Catholics believe. I'm sticking with sola scriptura for now but intend to write a series on sola fide after that. I hope I can clarify how Catholicism views the relationship of faith and obedience at that time.

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margaret avelar

5/21/2015 08:40:40 am

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Francis

3/9/2016 10:35:07 pm

I believe that God still speaks today, and who is to say that any word that comes out of His mouth now is any less valuable than back then? I am speaking of the gifts of prophesy and words of knowledge, which did not die with the apostles. However, whatever He says now will not contradict what is revealed in the Bible. As far as whether there is the same authority now as the apostles back then, then I have a question: Why does the book of Revelation have only 12 apostles being the foundation of the New Jerusalem? If there were others to come as foundations for the church, then wouldn't the New Jerusalem have more than 12? These 12 are the Apostles of the Lamb. I do believe that there are apostles of the church nowadays, but there is a difference between Apostles of the Lamb and apostles of the church. Apostle just means "sent one."